China has hit back at criticism from Google and Hillary Clinton accusing them of cultural imperialism by insisting that their view of freedom of information is somehow universal.
In an editorial Global Times said: "The US campaign for uncensored and free flow of information on an unrestricted Internet is a disguised attempt to …

COMMENTS

...not sure about China ...

I must admit, I like their argument ... it does have a kernel ot truth. And pot-noodle-democracy (instant and totally undigestible) has been *such* a success in Africa. When the Bejing olympics were on, I heard a Chinese spokesperson saying that they understood they were perhaps a bit behind on human rights, but that democratisation has to be managed, or the population will suffer.

I'm not saying it's right, just it's a different perspective. After all, if you want a country where the police make laws up on the spot, and the politicians are corrupt and self-serving, you don't need to fly half way around the world ....

Democracy-lite

Your point about democracy in Africa is spot on, and I'd highlight another example: Russia. Going from Czarism to Communism to sudden, early 90s democracy didn't exactly sort their troubles out. In fact, it could be argued they were lumbered with it rather than empowered by it - hence the return to authoritarian rule now.

This is the point often made about China, and it's a realistic one. If you have a population used to accepting that the government will do best by the nation, then to suddenly tell everyone that "no, you have to take part in government now" is going to cause a massive upheaval and not one they might easily accept.

Progressive democracy: good. Sudden democracy: chaos. Of course, the problem with the former is that "progressive" might mean "speed of a tectonic plate."

Imposing Values on Other Cultures

The United States should put an end to China's imposition of its values on Tibetan people, whose culture was negatively impacted by the Cultural Revolution.

A preemptive strike as soon as possible - before China obtains a second-strike capability - is Tibet's only real hope. Of course, it may already be too late, in which case, the United States' failure to act promptly after the collapse of the Soviet Union opened a window of opportunity is responsible for the continued agony of Tibet and the possible ultimate annihilation of its culture.

If imposing values on other cultures is wrong, then shouldn't we put a stop to the genuine examples of this?

@ John Savard

Ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa

Fuck me I just pissed myself laughing.

Right, so you want to somehow take on the worlds largest armed force (and yes it had FULL nuclear capabilites and mordern hardware) and somehow not shoot itself in the foot. For fucks sake, they can't even beat a guy in a tent with an Ak47

Look where your pc is made, or your clothes, your kids toys, your strapon, the list goes on, hell proberbly a large chunk of the US military is made in China now.

Keep dreaming little boy, 10 years and China will be the No1 superpower.

I agree (ish)....

The world economy is based on the US Dollar (today), this will change, whether it will become the yuan or something which is a blend of the yuan and euro remains to be seen, but this WILL happen, money is power and China will be the No1 superpower because of this.

@John

Tibet has been ruled by China pretty much most of the time since 1250, the reason for the conflict is that it has been been pretty much fueled by the Lama class (and funded by the CIA) they want to run Tibet, they have ruthlessly destroyed anything which doesn't resemble what they want, look at those who want to quietly worship Dorje Shugden, they have been doing this in Tibet for 350 years, then they get told that it's evil, the Dalai Lama is a 'religious dictator’.

Please, please whenever China is mentioned don't say "Think of Tibet", jsu because you don't understand what's actually going on. It's exactly the same as saying "Think of the Children".

@ fix my computer

To say "China ruled Tibet since ..." is retarded. China as a nation is, what, 50 years old? If you want to start using historical references, than China should submit to the will of the Mongol hordes, and I should hail the Queen.

@John - well trolled!

Nice one John - surprising no-one picked up on the "If imposing values on other cultures is wrong, then shouldn't we put a stop to the genuine examples of this?" by nuking the country you want to impose your values on :-)

@ John Savard, you are exactly what is wrong with the world today...

"The United States should put an end to China's imposition of its values on Tibetan people, whose culture was negatively impacted by the Cultural Revolution."

I can only assume you didn’t read what you posted before you actually submitted it.

You want The USA to end China's imposition on Tibet by imposing the USA's own values on China?

What a total fuckwit you are. Is it safe for me to assume you are an American citizen? It would take an American to spout such elitist drivel...

I think the rest of the world should club together and produce some method of making it clear to Americans where the boundaries of their country end. A big red ribbon or something, with towers every 100 yards with a PA system that announces to you that you are now entering/exiting the USA...

Your laws and values only mean anything INSIDE YOUR TERITORIAL WATERS, everything else outside is not you’re right to poke your nose and weapons in. Yes, have an opinion, but it is not your right to go interfering.

I don’t believe what china have done to Tibetan people is right, and the way to deal with it is not by marching in, guns blazing bombs flying, you do it by political pressure. It’s this,”gun ho” attitude that has got our soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, while your arms manufacturers get rich making bullets and missiles. Russia spent a decade in Afghanistan trying to win a war, and failed because the USA was feeding just enough weapons to the Taliban to keep the war alive.

Deal with china and the likes by not dealing with them on an economic level at all... buy nothing made in china, do not allow china to export into your country. China has only become so economically powerful because we in the west have a passion for cheap goods.

Buy products made in your own country, it will do your economy the world of good. Yes, consumer goods would be a bit more expensive, but hey, at least your money will stay in your own country and the people will be able to pay their mortgages and loans instead of bringing the rest of the western world to its knees by allowing the banks and money lenders to get greedy.

If all governments and people who say they don’t agree with china and their human rights records and the Tibet issue were to boycott Chinese made products 100%, in time that would have the desired effect of bringing them into line with what we accept as acceptable... but alas, our desire for cheap goods has been, and always will be more important than a few Tibetans or students in front of tanks thousands of miles away....

Realistic conversation

China: "No idea who did this, but how does that relate to censorship?"

Google: "Er, um, we don't know! But we want to go uncensored or we're leaving!!"

China: "Here are some fortune cookies for your way home. Don't bother to write. Bye!".

Those complete tossers at Google have now caused an international spat (which, incidentally, again brings them money through all the ads around the articles), for complete BS reasons. If they want to work in a country, they have to comply with the LOCAL rules. If they don't want to do that they can piss off - like any other US company.

The funny thing is that the Chinese hold all the aces, and I can't imagine Washington not being uncomfortably aware of it. All China needs to do is to slow export or dump a wad of dollars on the market and the US economy would keel over and die.

HyperRadioProActive NIRobotIQs ..... On a Slow Float and Long March to China *

"All China needs to do is to slow export or dump a wad of dollars on the market and the US economy would keel over and die." ..... Fred Flintstone Posted Friday 22nd January 2010 22:12 GMT

Actually, it is a lot easier than that, Fred, for all that China, or anyone for that matter who would have such clout or interest in utilising wads of dollars, or any instrument of credit, for keeling over what would obviously be weak and vulnerable economies, would need to do, is listen for and/or to any program and/or programmer that can both collapse and rebuild economies, for whenever you are smart enough to easily do the one, are you also smart enough to do the other.

And that would make the prime choice in the one or the other, a real no brainer for anyone who would be smart enough to do either and both ...... and that takes one into the Field of NEUKlearer Economics and Quantum Communications for the Big Pictures being Painted in Qubits ...... Pure Nuggets of Raw Information and Brilliant Gems of Source Intelligence that are Dynamically Flexible and Novelly Applied as to Future Objectives and Present Subjective Needs....... "A qubit has some similarities to a classical bit, but is overall very different. Like a bit, a qubit can have two possible values—normally a 0 or a 1. The difference is that whereas a bit must be either 0 or 1, a qubit can be 0, 1, or a superposition of both." ..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit

To collapse anything without an immediate and better viable replacement is the folly of fools and madness, with waging wars the ultimate sure leader signs of crazy and evil descent into capital crimes against humanity and pathetic self serving hypocritical badness. And the Beauty of Translucent Lucid Cloud Communications in Systems of Quantum Control is .....Idiot Wars are Not Possible. ..... for even the most Ambitiously Ambiguous and Opaque of Deceitful Declarations of Good Intent are Rendered Truly Transparent to One and All with its QuITe Alien and Advanced, Addictively Attractive Analytical Algorithms.

* and Houses with Scalable Processor Architecture in Lands Rising with the Sun.

ESP00kily enough, All of that would also make it a Most Extremely Attractive Proposition to Any System Failing in the Wild West too. ....... which would be entirely appropriate and in keeping with its Quantum [Qubit] Nature.

re: Realistic conversation

A straight flush beats all the aces. I'm not sure I follow you. The US is China's largest export destination. While the US is China's 4th largest import supplier, the trade deficit is still around 337 to 71 (in billions of US dollars). Some 23% of China's exports are to the US, while only 5% of US exports are destined for China. Since China's total exports are not drastically larger than the US exports, I fail to see how a slowing of the Chinese exports to the US would not be actually rather good for the US economy. It would likely be good for the Chinese economy as well, since it would lessen their exposure. And of course, if the US economy did keel over and die, then the Chinese economy would be decimated from the loss of 23% of their exports.

Likewise, dumping a wad of US dollars all of a sudden would trash their own cash surplus due to their heavy exposure. I have to disagree with your assessment. The Chinese-US economic situation is one of mutual assured destruction, in like manner to the Chinese-US military situation. They will work together, or they will go down together.

The Long March Great Game .......with the SMARTer Enabling Tortoise against the Vapid Disabling Hare

Google's business in China is much like every other foreign business in China, only much Spookier. It is the Placement of Product and Information for Business and Intelligence Advantage and has Really got Sweet FA to do with Search. ........ and to not Imagine that Google are not interested in pushing Slavery to Capitalism and Debt Creation in the East to support the Vapourware in the West is to be blissfully unaware of the Dire Straits that Uncle Sam and the Federal Reserve Ponzi System and Wall Street are in. But it is not unknown to China and the East.

And that type of ruse has been extremely well known and easily countered by the Chinese for centuries? And this is something which you may like to consider whenever you listen to some old has-been loser spouting on about democracy and freedom of speech etc ..... "When Barack Obama campaigned for his presidency, he was once asked, "which side would you take if democracy and freedom conflicted with the national interests of the U.S.?" Obama adamantly replies that he would choose the U.S. interests." .... http://forum.globaltimes.cn/forum/showthread.php?t=12198

No

The new opium

This is a skirmish in the rerun of the 19th century opium wars, using a virtual opium to create a hyperreal simulation of narcosis. The myth of Shangri-la is repeatedly peddled nostalgically as "freedom" to conceal the intended reality of its complete inversion - a feudalism for all peons with no liberties. Lamaism is a particularly vicious form of feudalism in that external social constraints of civil power are coupled with internal psychological constraints implied by acceptance of the buddhist belief system. Our nu insect overlards however have extracted from it just this abstraction, and are busy implementing a "democratic" form of it for us.

Ahhh....

But, you have to remeber that running over one student in a tank over 20 years ago is far, far worse than supporting the use of land mines, putting japanese americans in concentration camps, recruiting child soldiers, the death penalty, police brutality etc.

Oh Puh-leeez!

First, the National Guard are under control of the state (governor), not the federal government. Second, this incident was fully covered by the free media and remedial action was taken to prevent such an occurrence in the future, see http://tinyurl.com/bzvhc

When China begins to allow a real free press that will illuminate these types of injustices rather than cast a veil of secrecy over them, then your argument might hold some weight.

Yes, let's just do that...

First, the National Guard are under control of the state (governor), not the federal government. Second, this incident was fully covered by the free media and remedial action was taken to prevent such an occurrence in the future, see http://tinyurl.com/bzvhc

When China begins to allow a real free press that will illuminate these types of injustices rather than cast a veil of secrecy over them, then your argument might hold some weight.

Wait a minute..

Sure, China has a point, and sure, Google's so called 'pulling-out' of China is an epic fail of an excuse for cutting their losses due to competition from Baidu (so it seems). This doesn't excuse China from attacking (hacking) the accounts of human rights activists, if this is indeed what did happen, as is being suggested by many news sources.

China still has human rights issues, there's no questioning that. I mean, it was only a month ago since this happened:

Wait another minute...

The penalties are pretty clear. As a poster further up said with reference to Google, you must respect the local laws if you want to be there. You're saying it's wrong/morally reprehensible to kill someone who is involved in the bulk supply of a drug that kills thousands of people every year, causes large damage to society and puts pennies in the pockets of the taliban, even though he was tried subject to local laws and found guilty? Maybe a harsh punishment, but it shouldn't have been a surprise.

They should just lock 'em up without a trial like we do with terrorists, much tidier.

Whats Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gander

So Google does not want censorship? Reflect on the previous article in The Register on the search suggestion system. Search "Christianity is" and watch the suggestions... then search "Islam is" and watch the search suggestion disappear when you type the last 's' in. An error in programing? I do not think so, this is censorship to protect Google from irate religious fanatics. It is high time the Google giant come clean censorship is not a Orwellian veil to hide behind in the world of the net. We the people will see what you are doing, it all comes out in the wash! China and Google both Fail http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png

hmm

"China has hit back at criticism from Google and Hillary Clinton accusing them of cultural imperialism by insisting that their view of freedom of information is somehow universal."

Posting anon in case boss sees.

China is basically saying that their view of freedom of information is universal. Maybe only in countries trying to limit freedom of information. The best way to see this is in the countries that have "national firewalls"

Currently I work as a technician for a webhosting company in the United States, that has a large amount of chinese websites put together by people based in China.

Once of the constant issues we have is when those in charge of the "chinese firewall" decide that a site is "against their policies" they will block such website.

The way that they do this, is rather then blocking the url of the website, they block the IP address.

While this in theory is a good idea, on "shared hosting servers" the servers generally have one IP that can handle a large numer of websites, generally between 300-400.

When an IP gets blocked, rather then blocking one website they are blocking hundreds of websites.

How do we get around this?

By moving those who complain that chinese users can not see their websites to server that are currently not blocked.

This system however is flawed, as eventually all IP addresses may end up being blocked.

Once IPV6 is more widespread China is going to have to come up with another method for blocking due to the increase in the amount of new IP addresses that will be available.

hack me, block you

Google, if you want to get serious about this, then block all IP's from China on all of your servers/services. Then if you get attacked by proxy through some other place, threaten them that you'll pull out unless they also fully block China. Eventually everyone will get what they want, no more Chinese hackers and no more Western meddling.

We'll keep sending you 'money' if you keep sending us stuff. Everyone is happy, except some unknownable % of the Chinese public, who if they really cared would take care of business.

(p.s. China if you're also serious, please also block all western IP's except those you deem non-imperial. Otherwise everyone should shut the hell up and go back to sleep.)

Simple solution

Equality? Fairness? Quantity? Make your own...

"When it comes to information content, quantity, direction and flow, there is absolutely no equality and fairness."

If they'd been paying attention to Jonathen Schwartzkopf''s blog, they would know that we're outta the "information age" and well into the "participation age".

Meaning, its up to THEM to contribute content rather than just leech it from others (or block access to it, as the case may be). So China, please do start making freely available online more of your pr0n and movie DVDrips (no shaky back-of-the-cinema cams tho, the quality is shit), oh and mp3s (everyone loves mp3s) of your funny pop music stuff.

And please put the filenames in English, no one else speaks Chinese except u guys, and cutting/pasting into google translate all the time is tiresome.

...

Paris, she led the way into the participation age with her home movie productions.

Culurally Imperialist?

We should ignore the ramblings of the unelected dictatorship that is the Chinese government. The United States was at it's best when it's declaration of independence the founding fathers said:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

Is China seriously suggesting that a series of colonies rebelling against an imperial power was its self culturally imperialist? Lets join with google and stop co-operating with such dicatorships, the cost will surely be dearer to them than to us.

Folk in Glass Houses should never throw Stones.

If one thinks that China has a problem/is going to have a problem with political instability, generated either from within by some of its own disaffected people or fomented from without by Johnny Rotten Foreigners, it pales into insignificance whenever compared to the damage which both those sorts of grouping can do, whenever attention and simple actions such as withdrawing material support/declining to buy Toxic Debt/Treasury Bills/dollars, is focussed on the USA ...... because these sorts of tales ....... http://www.kitco.com/ind/Dougherty/jan222010.html ...... are the Reality which the Ponzi Fed and Wall Street Blues Bozos are facing, and those who would have been friends in the Future are realising that they have been Abused for a Long time and they would now Control Imaginary Wealth with the Control of the Dollar which they can decline to accept as legal tender. How then will Uncle Sam be able to pay for what it needs from everyone else, when everyone else requests that they be paid in anything other than worthless, easily printed 24/7/365 dollars.

I wonder if Sailfish, who Posted Friday 22nd January 2010 22:27 GMT .... "When China begins to allow a real free press that will illuminate these types of injustices rather than cast a veil of secrecy over them, then your argument might hold some weight." ..... can enlighten us as to whether the real free press/national media in the United States of America are illuminating those types of injustices as are discussed in "America's Impending Master Class Dictatorship" and which have created Catastrophic Virtually Suicidal Overwhelming Debt or is a veil of secrecy and further pathetic denial with desperate everything-is-rosy-in-the-garden and everything-is-under-control spin the fodder which is being force fed to the ignorant masses who are so easily abused with their ...... well, it is a Game of Great Traitorous Deceit and Defeat, isn't it, for the Spin is Great Power and Wealth but the Reality is Crushing Debt and Slavery to a Corrupted System and Federal Reserve ....... and a Corrupt System known to be Corrupt by those who would still be Enslaving Puppets and Muppets to Run it and Take the Hits and Deflect the Flak, for the Instant Supply of more of that which is the Problem, a Paper-over-the Cracks Promise and Currency which has no value from a Capitalist System which is Corrupted.

Methinks that is a much bigger Problem for Uncle Sam to have to deal with, than anything anyone could throw at China to handle.

@AC Hmm

"China is basically saying that their view of freedom of information is universal. Maybe only in countries trying to limit freedom of information. The best way to see this is in the countries that have "national firewalls""

I don't see how you infer this. China have decreed that they will implement their view of freedom of information on the Chinese people - this seems pretty consistent with what all governments do to one degree or another.

You post Jihadist material on a US based server and see how quickly it stays up, or post excerpts from the bible on a Saudi website, or violent goat porn on a UK server or many other such examples.

OK, your behind the scenes examples may be infuriating to others but again this is (by your own words) only affecting Chinese users. We may believe that the Chinese government goes too far in its censorship and general state control but I am pretty sure you can say the same for all governments - and certainly the US which is the focus of this debate (just look at internet gambling for one instance that is much more blatant and far-reaching than China controlling what it's own citizens can see).